


Honey, Understand That I Have Been Left Here in the Reeds

by theshipsfirstmate



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, but Olicity angst all the way, mentions of Sgt. Small Hands, post-5x02 fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-16
Updated: 2016-10-16
Packaged: 2018-08-22 19:04:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8296727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshipsfirstmate/pseuds/theshipsfirstmate
Summary: post-5x02. Because there’s really only one person who can even come close to understanding what Felicity’s going through.
"Every so often, she’ll get a reminder that this man has actually said his vows while she stood in front of him in a white gown. Every now and then she’ll be paralyzed by the thought of how close they came to getting this right."





	

_Title from “[715 - CR∑∑KS](http://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DP_Fx1yq3A8M&t=NTdkNTliNGI2Nzc2NTM4YjI0YjRiZTczMDc5NDdlMzZjMmNiZTVkMSxIWjZQSXZHWA%3D%3D&b=t%3AiAw4tJIAalN1OvhWtUFPsQ&m=1)” by Bon Iver. This new album, folks. It is my everything right now. And the first time I listened to this particular song, and the crescendo built on the lyrics “goddamn, turn around now, you’re my A-team,” it screamed Olicity angst to me._

**Honey, Understand That I Have Been Left Here in the Reeds**

She gets back to the loft that night – back _home_ , she sometimes forgets to think of it like that these days  – and she’s totally exhausted. But she can’t even sit down.

She’s restless, there’s an itching just under her skin that started to burn as soon as Ragman said the name. _Havenrock_. She held it together for a while, there were team-building exercises to oversee, but as it sinks in, she’s starting to spin out. Her heart’s beating too fast, and she can’t catch her breath.

She’s so out of it, she nearly jumps a foot in the air when her phone buzzes on the kitchen counter. She grabs for it as she continues pacing a track in the tile around the island.

_“Be over in 30.”_ Malone’s message reads, and she doesn’t mean for it to happen, but her stomach drops with dread. _“Think an order of pad thai is a reasonable exchange for use of the SCPD gas chromatograph?”_

She’s unconsciously slipping her shoes on and grabbing her purse before she’s even done skimming the text. She doesn’t take the time to second-guess the flight response, doesn’t give herself a chance to consider the consequences.

All she knows is that she can’t be here right now, can’t fake her way through a night of takeout and bad movies with Billy when inside, she’s crumbling slowly to pieces.

She _should_ just tell him.

That’s what a partnership is supposed to be. Felicity sees herself on the other side of that judgmental mirror, chastising Oliver for keeping things to himself, for locking his fears away and fighting his battles on his own.

_Just tell him,_ she thinks again, ashamed at how the tables have turned, but she’s already pressing the button for the elevator down. She can’t do it. Not tonight.

The sight of Oliver in the lobby of the building is so familiar that, for a split-second, she forgets to be surprised. But he is, she sees it in his eyes and then remembers that he’s not the man she was expecting.

“Hi,” he offers after what feels like a long moment. Felicity tries to answer, but it gets stuck in her throat.

“I wanted to… I came to see if you were OK,” Oliver continues, and when she steps a little closer, he won’t meet her eyes. “But I know you said before… and I knew I shouldn’t, so I was just standing down here, trying to make myself leave.”

“I’m fine,” Felicity dismisses him on instinct, voice dripping with false levity, just like she had earlier in the day. This time, she nearly bites her tongue when his eyes snap up at her answer, narrowing to daggers.

“You’re not fine,” he insists, tone dark and haunted by one of his ghosts or another. She nearly rolls her eyes. “You’re _not_. And you shouldn’t be. Listen, I know how…”

“You don’t know anything about this,” she levels him stubbornly, voice shaking because she’s actually splintering apart inside, fracturing like a fault that’s reached its breaking point. “You’re thousands of lives away from knowing what this feeling is like.”

“Maybe, but I’m closer than most.” Oliver takes another step forward and his voice goes softer, but stays powerful. He’s stoic, any trace of nerves gone as he approaches her intently, staring with that singular focus. It’s impossible to look away, especially when he says her name likes he does. “Come on, Felicity. You know I can understand this better than anyone.”

He doesn’t put enough to pressure on that last word for her to worry, but she still wants to get out of here.

They can’t go up to the loft, that would be true even if Billy weren’t on his way over. She can’t even imagine standing in that space with him again, memories stacked all the way to the high ceilings.

“Can we take the Porsche out?” Felicity hears herself ask absently. “I kind of feel like going for a drive.”

Oliver looks at her for a long minute before he nods, and she can’t tell if she’s lost her ability to read him, or he’s being particularly inscrutable. She follows him silently out to the curb and there it is, their getaway vehicle from a whole lifetime ago. Has he been driving it regularly, she wonders, or did he have the plan ready before she even thought it up?

Felicity doesn’t know much about his life these days, beyond their usual nighttime activities and the Mayor Pretty Boy headlines. They’ve fallen into an unspoken moratorium on personal talk; all she knows for certain is that he moved most of his stuff from the loft into Laurel’s old place, where Thea is still living.

She wonders where he sleeps now, or if he’s really sleeping at all.

They climb into the Porsche and when Oliver puts the roof back, the streetlights illuminate the dashboard enough that she can she can see the tiny blue star sticker affixed to the volume knob on the stereo. It’s still sparkly, but worn around the edges, and her heart aches at the blissful recollection it inspires. She remembers the perfect summer afternoon, remembers fishing the pack of stickers from a box of Cracker Jack at a minor league baseball game in Northern California and playfully sticking one onto his cheek, remembers the taste of toffee on his tongue when he dragged her back to the car during the seventh inning stretch.

They’re just reaching the city line when her phone rings, the tinny tone cracking through the wall of silence that’s building between them. Felicity presses ignore and realizes that she’s been holding her breath, heaving a sigh that isn’t as soft as she’d like it to be as she slides the screen from her purse just enough to check that it wasn’t an emergency from Thea or her mother. She can feel Oliver’s gaze on her before it darts back to the road, so she proactively changes the subject.

“I know that I was the biggest cheerleader for the new team, but I’m just not sure I can do it,” she admits. “I don’t think I can be down there with him every day, knowing what I did, what I took from him.”

She going to learn Ragman’s real name eventually, Felicity realizes then. She’s going to learn the name of the father she took from him.

“I’m sorry,” she hears Oliver say, and he sounds far away. She knows he doesn’t deserve to deliver the apology for this. It’s not his fault. “I’m sorry, but we need all the help we can get.”

“I know, I know.” She rolls her head back, lolling it to the side to stare out at the inlet that runs parallel to the road. It’s the same water that had been painted golden and pink by the sunset on their drive out of town more than a year ago, but tonight, the moon and stars are shrouded by clouds, so it looks only black, murky and ominous. Felicity nearly laughs aloud at the conspicuousness of the metaphor.

“Do you talk to anyone about it?” Oliver asks cautiously, when she’s been silent for a long moment. She wonders if he finds this reversal of roles as bizarre as she does. “Do you…do you talk to _him_ about it?”

She whips her head to look at him, but he has the excuse of facing the road and the aid of preparedness to mask his reaction. “How did you…”

“I mean, I didn’t know, officially,” he admits softly. “But I can tell you’re somewhere else these days.”

She just sputters, at a total loss. She’s spent a lot of time embroiled in anxiety about how Oliver would find out about Billy, never assuming he’d get there without her knowing. “I didn’t want to…”

“You really think I can’t see you anymore?” He interrupts her, sounding a little incredulous as his voice recovers to full strength. “You think I don’t know when you’re happy, when you’re hurting?”

“I’m not…I’m just _trying_.” The words sound weak on their own, but she won’t be the one to say “moving on,” not out loud. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“I just want you to be happy, Felicity,” he tells her, not for the first time. It sounds both true and well-rehearsed, and she supposes it can be both. “That’s all. Wanting to be the reason for it, that’s… that was secondary.”

She reaches across the center console, almost unconsciously, to take his hand in hers, and her eyes squeeze closed on tears she didn’t even realize were at bay. She feels the wind press them into chilly tracks on her cheeks and then feels Oliver flinch under her touch, drawing her hand back immediately.

“You should talk to him about this.” There’s the reaction she was expecting, low and wounded.

“I want to,” she tells him, unsure if she’s lying or not. “I just couldn’t. I can’t.” _How do you tell someone that you’re a natural disaster? How do you make someone who’s never caused such destruction understand how it feels when the ruinous winds die down?_

Oliver reaches out then, as if he can sense her inner rumblings, and takes her hand back from where it’s folded nervously in her lap. He laces his fingers through hers and it’s calming and adrenalizing at the same time, like the eye of a hurricane.

“You’ll get through this,” he assures her, eyes remaining on the road, “the same way I learned how to look Quentin Lance in the eye again. The same way I learned how to fight for this city. With time, and with people to support you.”

He squeezes her hand softly, and just as she’s starting to overthink things, he pulls off at the next rest stop and flips a U-turn, headlights flashing briefly on a highway mile marker that tells her Ivy Town was still hundreds of miles away.

They’ve done this part of the drive together too, Felicity remembers as they head back to reality. The reentry to Star City, the prodigal heroes’ return. They were holding hands that time as well; braced together against a mounting threat of uncertainty and danger, so naively certain they could handle it if they only had each other.

That wrongness hangs over them now like a fog, and she’s still clutching his hand like it’s a lifeline, the only thing pointing her back towards shore.

“Curtis told me that I don’t know how to have a partner,” Oliver recalls aloud as the city lights get closer by the second. It’s like she can feel his whole body tense from their one point of contact. “He might be right, but it took me a while to realize that was mostly a personal dig.”

Felicity’s heart thumps a little in her chest. Every so often, she’ll get a reminder that this man has actually said his vows while she stood in front of him in a white gown. Every now and then she’ll be paralyzed by the thought of how close they came to getting this right. 

“I’ve never really done this by myself, though. You and Digg were with me from almost the very beginning,” he continues, and Felicity has a quick, violent flash of homesickness for their friend who took his grief halfway across the world. “I was never alone.”

She feels in this moment a little like she used to in those early years, when she knew she couldn’t love Oliver, but wasn’t able to help herself. It’s that same rush of affection, but heavier, with a few chapters of history and carnal knowledge piled on top.

She thought it might be easier to avoid now, thought her feelings for him would be easier to suppress with the carnage of their mistakes right in the rearview mirror. Instead, it seems to be a reminder of everything that links them inexorably, every unbelievable moment that makes them once in a lifetime.

“You’ll never be alone in this, Felicity,” Oliver tells her, soft but assured, aligning with her inner monologue as they turn back down her block. She’s both grateful for his certainty and resentful for the internal turmoil it incites. “You’ll always have me, no matter what.”

The parking spot right in front of the building is open – the one he used to be so excited to score when they came home together after a long day or night of work – and he pulls into it, but makes no move to get out of the car. Instead, he gives her hand one last squeeze, pulling it up to press two soft kisses to the back of her palm before he lets it go. One square in the middle, and one a little up and to the left, almost where there’d be a diamond right now if things were easy and life was fair.

It’s intimate enough that her eyes snap shut – reveling in the feeling of his gaze on her, the brush of his warm breath across her knuckles – but not so far over the line that she feels guilty. She’s grateful for his restraint, even as some traitorous voice in the back of her brain is screaming at her to lean forward in search of his lips.

“Goodnight, Oliver,” she says with another deep breath in, bracing herself for what comes next. Maybe this is the moment, but she’s not quite ready, not yet. “Thank you, for driving.”

“Anytime, Felicity.” He smiles at her with gratefulness and a little longing and just a hint of that thing that used to make her knees buckle. “I’ll go anywhere with you.”

The mirroring of her own words from forever ago somehow rips her apart and reassembles her at the same time as she walks back into the building. She presses the button for the elevator with a shaky hand, turning to watch Oliver idle in the Porsche until the car arrives. Every tick of a passing floor on her way up is another piece of armor clicking into place.

Malone accepts her harried apology and overworked excuses about a late night at work and a dead cellphone charger without so much as a second thought, and Felicity expects relief to wash over her, wiping out the uneasiness that’s back to churning in her gut. But it doesn’t come. 

He doesn’t question why she has no appetite, even when he’s ordered all of her favorites from the Greek place down the street. He smiles at her easily but doesn’t look close enough at the one she gives him in return. He kisses her lips passionately and doesn’t know that the back of her left hand still burns hotter.

He may be who she wants – or who she desperately  _wants_ to want – but as the complications of her other lives begin to inevitably bleed through, Felicity wonders if he can ever truly be who she needs.


End file.
